[cairo] introducing a "context backend"

[Chris Wilson]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:59:12 +1200, "Robert O'Callahan" <robert at ocallahan.org> wrote:
> How would people feel about introducing some kind of "context backend" that
> lets pretty much all of the functionality of a cairo_t be passed straight
> through to a platform context backend?

The name I picked for this was cairo_gstate_backend_t, mostly to avoid the
confusion that I think arises from cairo_backend_t/cairo_surface_backend_t.

The goal is to then to pass the information to the backend immediately,
and convert the existing implementation into a library of core helpers
that the backends may choose to use or to assist them in their task. There
will still be the occasional impedance mismatch between native targets
and the API that will required fixup. Similarly, there are quite a few
features exposed by the native api that deserve to be in Cairo - opacity
and various joins and pens.

It is worth doing this sooner rather than later.
-ickle

-- 
Chris Wilson, Intel Open Source Technology Centre